Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have recently released their respective plans for child care cost reform and maternity leave. While both candidates promise positive reform from the current federal standard, neither plan is detailed or well-explained.
The current federal standard for maternity leave was passed by Bill Clinton in 1993, and it allows for parents of newborns to take 12 weeks off with job security but no pay. In short, you won’t lose your job for a few months, but the average family likely can’t go that long without a paycheck.
Trump proposes a simple six-week paid leave for new mothers. While this may seem like an obvious step in the right direction, the Editorial Board found a few glaring holes in his plan.
First, Trump’s idea affords no leave to fathers of newborns. Many companies already offer paid time off to new dads, and we think it should become a federal standard. As fathers take a more active role in child rearing than ever, American men should have the ability to take care of their newborns without fearing financial ruin.
The second gaping hole in Trump’s plan is its implications for male same-sex households. No paid time off is being extended to these parents, and they will likely be forced to spend more money than average on early childhood care.
In an awkward attempt to connect to female voters, with whom Trump is polling exceedingly low, he announced that his plan was developed by his daughter Ivanka.
She falsely claimed that the 6-week plan was offered to all employees at Trump’s hotels. It’s not.
Trump has the audacity to propose federal requirements that he doesn’t even follow in practice.
Clinton proposes a much more expansive parental leave plan, but the cost of such a comprehensive federal program is immense.
She wants to institute a paid 12-week leave period for all new parents. Their pay during this period would be reduced to two-thirds, but this would obviously help families more than no income whatsoever.
When asked how America could possibly fund such a leave policy, she proposed a typical Democrat plan of taxing the rich at a higher rate. She said that wealthy Americans need to be “paying their fair share.”
It seems to us that Clinton plans to pay for an ambitious amount of policies by levying higher taxes on financially successful citizens.
European countries generally provide new parents with long periods of paid leave. Sweden gives families 480 days off with 80 percent of their salaries. This is only doable through the country’s average personal tax rate of 57 percent and huge per-employee taxes on businesses.
In short, longer parental leave periods come with a large price tag on businesses and individuals alike. While Clinton’s plan is nowhere near as accommodating as Sweden’s, her $200 billion idea will not be without significant cost.
Overall, we came to the conclusion that neither candidate has a balanced plan for family leave. Trump presented a half-baked idea which he awkwardly claims his daughter invented, and Clinton’s plan redistributes too much wealth to be palatable to Americans.
Newborn child care laws absolutely need reform, but Clinton and Trump have both missed the mark on fixing the problem this time around.
